Morning

Breakfast magic happens all day long across from the Othello light rail station: chorizo, cheddar, fluffy eggs, and diced potato in a $7 package so dense it requires actual physical exertion to lift. Or, get that same combo inside a $2.50 oversize breakfast taco.

That cubby on East Madison Street that looks like a Wes Anderson–designed diorama? Actually a welcome outpost for legitimately great bagels. Maldon salt and scallion, pumpernickel with dill and black pepper—any combo of schmear and chewy bagel is great (and $6 after tax), but Friday lines are extra long, thanks to the special challah and caviar schmear.

This pastel-tiled nook on Capitol Hill illustrates chef Jake Vorono’s philosophy of “healthy without harping on about it” with a grain bowl so glorious it demands harping: puffed wild rice and amaranth, roasted vegetables like broccoli and turnips, chickpea-miso dressing, and on top a delightfully runny soft-boiled egg. Ten bucks never tasted so wholesome.

The town’s biscuit sandwich benchmark is this unruly stack of prosciutto, arugula, and fried egg, with manchego cheese plus a smear of aioli piqued with Mama Lil’s, all for $9. This modest U District cafe makes biscuits that are almost crisp on the outside, yet soft and fluffy within.

Noon

Chinatown–International District doesn’t lack for Vietnamese sandwiches. But the more the better, especially at this Jackson Street sandwich shop where a family of charming sandwich smiths build all manner of banh mi to order (all $4 each), such as one with housemade pâté and thin slices of cured ham on a freshly baked baguette.

What dark art of the grill injects the taste of peppers and onions into the very essence of the finely chopped beef? How is it that meat juice and cheese sauce fuse into a superstrain of flavor? The $10 cheesesteak from this tidy Rainier Valley strip mall may not yield answers—but probably leftovers.

A spread of smoothly blended chickpeas, tahini, and a bit of lemon isn’t merely a side dish; rather it’s the dish, and a great one, inside owner David Nussbaum’s Capitol Hill cafe. Hummus is the foundation for the $13 basar, shawarma-spiced ground beef topped with pine nuts and accompanied by warm pita bread and house pickles.

Attention to detail makes this $11.50 sandwich legend: Tender pork shoulder, brightened by marinade. The crunch of oversize grilled onions, the unifying sheen of garlic-forward aioli. Structured buns that can handle it all and not get soggy. Two sons and a pair of bright-pink shacks on either end of Ballard carry on the family tradition that began with the original Paseo.

The simplest $10 preparation at this U District noodle house is also the best showcase for its broad, rustic Xi’an–style biang biang noodles: just some searing hot oil to magnify the charms of chilies, garlic, soy sauce, and bean sprouts. Make sure to inhale the aroma before you dive in.

On Capitol Hill, next door to Plum Bistro, owner Makini Howell’s first vegan restaurant, is her latest: a walk-up counter that serves healthful salads like this one of chopped romaine, coriander-rubbed tofu, red peppers, tangerine, and toasted tumeric pepitas. Even the fiercely carnivorous can quell hunger for about $10.

Cheap isn’t a word to use with raw fish, so let’s call the $15 rice bowl that overflows with marbled salmon, tuna, shrimp, and eel a screaming value for the glistening abundance of high-quality fish. Come for lunch, when crowds at this cheerful new donburi shop aren’t quite as crazy.

Pike Place Market’s midday miracle: this case of sandwiches (crispy chicken, beef poblano, brie with tomato) pressed on order until warm and toasty. Maybe order half a sandwich and round out lunch via the endless parade of salads by the pound. A proper meal can run $10, even with dessert.

A chicken sandwich with kale salad from Michou (right); its sando-filled deli case.

That superlative housemade man’oushe flatbread meets the soft, salty white cheese known as jibneh—not to mention an herb-forward riot of mint, tomato, green olives, and za’atar spices. It’s an $11 lunch that’s light, but also comforting.

Oysters, the Original Fast Casual

Long before there were grain bowls or poke bars, another fast-casual phenom proliferated in the Northwest. They came in their own, mostly calcium carbonate container, nature’s to-go box, compostable before it was hip (or lawful). Oysters were surely fast—unhinge that jagged exterior with a swift shuck, then down it in one briny slurp. And what’s more casual than a food plucked directly from cool tidelands?

However, mollusks from low shores skew high-end these days. Lucky us, Seattle has many a seafood den with an oyster happy hour. Along Lake Union find White Swan Public House, where oysters on the half shell can run $1 to $1.75. Meanwhile, rows of $2 oysters await daily upon crushed ice beds at Ballard Annex Oyster House. Taylor Shellfish cultivates much of the state’s tidal flats and runs three oyster bars in town, all of which have a rotating happy hour oyster for under two bucks.

And, unlike a grain bowl, they’re perfect with beer. —RS

Night

Somehow steaming hot, dough-wrapped bundles of beef and potato are best inhaled in the wee hours—perhaps after frequenting the many bars that surround the Fremont and Capitol Hill locations, perhaps because no one really needs a reason for a $9 bowl of Russian-style dumplings, dusted with curry powder and doused with red-chili rice vinegar.

Get thee to Capitol Hill’s unabashedly weird bar to sate those midnight carnival hankerings. Slather the corn dog in toppings, should you so desire, but the original can’t be beat: hand dipped in cornmeal batter that, when fried, forms a golden crust. A $6 corndog never felt so right.

It’s a Midwest tater tot casserole after a journey of self-discovery in the Pacific: crispy tots and kalua pork beneath a lava flow of red kimchi sauce, white mayo, and the yolk of a fried egg. It’s $10, only available at the Denny Regrade location, and even better with one of the beers on tap.

Don’t plan on being productive after a round of Aloha Tots from Marination’s Regrade location.

It’s been a cheap-eats legend for years, and rightfully so. South Park’s famed $4.50 burger tastes like fond memories from a midcentury small-town drive-in—fat slice of cheese melted over a slender chargrilled patty, squishy bun, sprinkle of onion, and coins of dill pickle. The tavern’s been-here-forever ambience is just a bonus.

A refined appetizer, a barometer of a chef’s deft hand—the tartare is usually the stuff of finer dining, but in Ballard it’s stuffed between two slices of rye bread, wonderfully dressed with yuzu kosho mayo, and, at $13, the most exquisite bite issued forth from this small sandwich shop.

Mark Fuller applied his fried chicken know-how to a masterpiece of a sandwich sold at a counter inside the Rachel’s Ginger Beer at University Village. The chicken crackles like fireworks and is just about as hot; thank goodness for the cooling properties of kewpie mayo, pickled daikon, and crunchy iceberg, all in a sweet bun. This massive, marvelous $11 sandwich stays crunchy even for takeout.

Pizza by the Slice

It’s the ultimate cheap eat, classed up of late with double the pepperoni—or even taco meat, or a combo of mortadella, fontina, and ricotta—on a perfectly chewy crust (but still just $4) at Mark Fuller’s Supreme pizza tavern in West Seattle. At Southpaw, John Sundstrom’s wood-fired pizzeria on 12th Avenue, $6 gets you a quarter pie that might sport Italian sausage and basil-mint pesto or chorizo and padron peppers. But if you prefer your pizza slices giant, folded, and consumed after copious booze, Hot Mama’sis the gold standard and, at $2.50 a slice, one alluringly greasy bargain; Big Mario’s $4 behemoths are available until 2am in three locations around the city.